2011 Digital Advertising Horoscope

Transparency will be the watch word in 2011 and we’ll all be bombarded with links to opt-out screens. I trust that we’ll get better at explaining how and what, if any, data is used. I also suspect we’ll see an emergence of more data validation services.

Let’s see what our Horoscope tells us for New Year’s Day. And I don’t mean that I foresee a murder and you shouldn’t be living in Midsomer at 9pm tonight. No, this is my attempt to better my score from last year and see what’s coming up in the year ahead for digital advertising. Really, there’s not much else to do until the fireworks have stopped rattling in my ears.

Aquarius: Your Campaigns Will Be Better Targeted

I’m still placing bets on increased data usage in advertising targeting. Although highly targeted advertising placements have been around since the first digital ad technologies appeared, such sophisticated targeting was not adopted universally. It will become increasingly important and advertisers will look to target across the data spectrum to incorporate behavioural and declared data alongside localisation and social metrics. Of course, somebody will release a(nother) study to say there’s an over reliance on audience data at the expense of creativity and engagement but you don’t need to read Mystic Meg to know there’ll be an increasing flow of data in 2011. This tidal wave of data is increasingly complex to manage and nobody seems to have developed a widely adopted trading platform for audience data yet. Who will fall foul of the data regulators in 2011? Somebody will. From a publisher’s perspective this will become an area in need of attention: selling media with data, selling standalone data, buying data and guarding against data theft. Somebody needs to keep an eye on all this to and, I imagine, it’ll need more than a board and wetsuit to ride the breaking data waves. Publishers need tools to mange their data and, properly, understand the value of that data.

Pisces: You Will Wear The Cloak Of Transparency

None of this, of course, will happen without full disclosure on data use. Transparency will be the watch word in 2011 and we’ll all be bombarded with links to opt-out screens. I trust that we’ll get better at explaining how and what, if any, data is used. I also suspect we’ll see an emergence of more data validation services. Advertisers, their agencies and publishers can increasingly partner with a wide range of data suppliers across the spectrum but who, if anybody, is validating it? Just as we’ve seen the rise of Better Advertising to combat the disclosure issue, I’m sure an increasing number of parties will offer to validate your data soon. Enough people aren’t asking if the data they are using is actually accurate and, therefore, valuable.

Gemini: The Moon Is In A Customising Orbit

Last year I didn’t need to be Russell Grant to suggest that digital advertising markets will start to grow again. That growth provided confidence to publishers and media owners who will now start to look for an increasing number of ways to differentiate themselves from their competitors. In a growing market, and for large pools of display advertising inventory, standardisation is a good thing but this will be the year more-and-more publishers add something bespoke to their media kits. Unique ad-units, integrated creative and an increasing number of sponsorship opportunities will appear to combat a continued rise of bidding and trading across more standard ad placements. And that approach will cross channels with iAd leading the way with more customised, non standard deliveries to iOS users. There has been a lot of talk about Apple’s iAd platform being either game changing or not but I don’t believe we’ve even scratched the surface. Increased interaction (yes, engagement) facilitated by this platform will pave the way for a change in the way brand-building ads are developed (will we even see them or call them ads anymore? They’ll be far removed from anything we have today). This will apply cross-platform as publishers will start to offer deeper experiences on mobile and on bigger screens. In the UK, Absolute Radio have already started to show what’s possible.

Cancer: A Job In The Financial Sector Awaits

Publishers will continue to embrace trading for part of their media. We’ll see exiles from banks and energy companies, who understand the deepest complexities of traded marketplaces, take roles at both ends of the trading floor. I wonder if Lori Reid can tell us if that will lead to a bonus culture to rival the big financial institutions? Customised ad placements and a growing marketplace will put pressure on the industry to deliver another type of data: the business insight. For publishers this will be about understanding advertising performance on their properties and tying that to financial and sales data. The buy-side of the industry will continue to pursue ad performance metrics but, I imagine, will also, increasingly, analyse the return on those other ads where awareness and interaction are the measurement metrics. We’ll see ourselves learning to better mine our financial data to understand what is, and what is not, working well. And from this insight publishers will start to channel investment into both content that is proven to be working from their, and their advertising partners, perspectives and into technology, an area where they have – recently – been out gunned by network and buy-side companies.

Virgo: Your Digital Ads Will Be Everywhere

Social media will continue its rise and, maybe, Twitter will have another advertising proposition by this time next year. Coupons will remain popular, no doubt leading to big name digital businesses going on a buying spree (without the 20% off offers) pretty soon and money will be spent on crowbaring coupon offerings into the mobile world. There’ll be new places to put all these ads too. I’m sure we’re about to have a raft of technology announcements with ever more tablets, smartphones and even apps on your laptops and desktops, but the one to watch will be YouView, the internet connected digital TV platform, which will enable “if somebody gets round to it” an interactive, engaging, social television experience with a data-driven display advertising marketplace on your telly-box.

Gee, even Jonathan Cainer couldn’t have foreseen that many buzzwords in a single sentence. Of course, as with all horoscopes, these are the easier predictions. It’s the unknown that I’m most excited about. As with last year, follow @curns on Twitter to see if this is all stuff-and nonsense or if it will happen. That, or just see if I can crowbar Claire Petulengro’s name into a tweet (she’s the astrologer in The Sunday People, you know).

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Author: jon

Jon Curnow writes on curnow.org about things that interest him. The site has been around for many years in various forms and he always wants to write much more here than he does. View all posts by jon